career magic quadrant

i was reading a book the other day, and one of the characters was a lawyer. he was pondering the idea of how moral he was, how he bent the rules, and it got me to think of what that means, and how different professions treat the matter of morality differently. in addition, it got me thinking that there are different levels of belief in the morality of what is done - surely the carpenter doesn't think about the meaning of what he does as much as the policeman might.

so how do we summarize this? in a magic quadrant. i stole the idea from gartner, but it works pretty good here. i wonder if they'll sue me. there is one thing i'd like to add: how the belief of the individual differs from the view of society, but i couldn't keep the graph simple and add that info. alas, it will have to work without it.

in any case, let me explain the axes and the meaning of each.

the horizontal axis describes morality. on the right lie the professions that are truly ethical, with their motivations and rewards being uncontroversial and generally agreed upon. to the left are the consequentialism, whose ends always justify the means. the means are almost always questionable and the ends are narrowly and selfishly beneficial, if that at all. those in the middle carry little or no moral value attached to their profession.

the vertical axis is how deeply the professional believes in his or her morality. to the top are those who strongly believe in the (a)morality of what they're doing, whereas at the bottom are those who cannot decide - or to whom it doesn't really matter. in the middle, of course, are those who, in terms of morality, don't feel much about what they do at all.

enjoy (click to enlarge).


update: there seems to be some confusion on the issue of the axes. my bad. the horizontal axis is the objective overview of the morality. the vertical axis is the subjective belief of the professionals.

want something fun to do?

just drink water from a bottle. drinking from it is even more fun than drinking from a normal water.

http://www.camelbak.com/drink-study

wtf age is this that describes water drinking as fun?

may they burn in their personal hell

i live in dubai. it's not bad in general, except we have etisalat.

etisalat is the most expensive, least efficient and most horribly over-subscribed service provider in the region. we're stuck with them. i don't have the choice of going anywhere else. i call and yell till i'm blue in the face to get someone to get to my house to fix a connection that's been down for a week now, but it's useless. this is a summary (and i do apologize for the length - it's needed to highlight the pain i went through):

call 1, tuesday 11th:

"my internet is down"
"ok what's the brand of your modem"
"siemens blah blah blah"
"are the lights on?"
"yes"
"ok connect your laptop directly to the fiber optic modem"
"ok"
"now enter your username and password"
"i don't know them"
"ah you need to reset your password"
"how?"
"go to www.e4me.ae and place a request there, then call e-services help desk and ask them to reset it"
"ok... but you know the dhcp on the modem isn't working at all, so it's not a password issue"
"no sir without a password i can't help"

of course they don't tell you how you're supposed to access the website without an internet connection. luckily i have my trusty mobile. i login and reset the password. i call the call center after that.

call 2, tuesday 11th:

"i reset my password and i'm calling you"
"why?"
"the call center told me to"
"no if you've accessed the website there's no need"
"ok, do i need to do anything else?"
"no, it's ok, but it needs 24 hours"
"24 hours to reset a password?"
"yes"
"ok thank you"

call 3, wednesday 12th:

"my internet is down, and i called yesterday, and..."
"ok what's the brand of your modem"
"siemens blah blah blah"
"are the lights on?"
"yes"
"ok connect your laptop directly to the fiber optic modem"
"ok"
"now enter your username and password"
"entered, still fails"
"ah"
"as i've told your colleague yesterday, the dhcp isn't working"
"ok then we'll need to send a tech, please take the complaint number, someone will contact you"

silence all through thursday, so i call on friday - what an idiot expecting them to work over the weekend.

call 4, friday 14th:

"sir no one has called"
"sir the complaint needs 2 business days, and since you logged the complaint on wed, then you had thursday and friday is off, so you may expect a call on saturday, but they work half-day, so maybe sunday"
"ok thanks"

call 5, sunday 16th:

"i have a problem with my internet and you've promised to send a tech and no one's here"
"sir what kind of modem do you have?"
"no, no i don't want you to fix it, i just want to know where the tech is"
"account number"
"blah blah blah"
"ah sir, someone will call you"
"i have called a week ago and still no one is here"
"sir they need 2 working days to get there; you called on wednesday and friday and saturday were off, so today is the second business day"
"but i called on friday and you told me that sat is a working day"
"no sat is off"
"ok when can i expect the call"
"within 2 days"
"yes, today is the second day, what time"
"i don't know sir i don't have their schedule"
"ok how about you give me their number, i'll call them"
"sir they don't have a direct number"
"ok... how do you get in touch with them?"
"we file the complaint and they get it" (in other words, magic)
"ok, so can you please put a note that i asked for a follow-up?"
"ok, done"

call 6, sunday 16th:
"i have a problem with my internet and no one has called"
"sir account number"
"blah blah"
and i swear he asked me this again "sir what brand of modem do you have?"
"no no i don't want you to fix anything, i just want to know when you'll send the the tech"
"well, sir, what lights do you have on the modem"
*facepalm*
"i tried it all, i used a wire, i connected directly to the modem, i tried all the diagnostics 15 times and it's still not working, i just want to know where the tech is"
"ok sir, please take this tracking number"

call 7, monday 17th"
"no one has come"
"i see here that you've filed to complaint on wed"
"yes, that's what i said, now where is the guy?"
"sir i've made a rush comment, here is the tracking number"

and here i am writing this blog from work. needless to say, it's still not resolved but i do have 3 tracking numbers and i know the exact key combination on their ivr to get directly to a live agent. ha! take that etisalat!

how did that idiot get up there?

i find myself asking that question more often these days. you would meet someone in a respectable position in a company, and the first thing you think of is this: how the fuck did you end up here? obviously, you have no brain. it is quite apparent that your iq rivals that of a dyslexic pigeon. yet, despite all challenge you have climbed the corporate ladder.

i find there are three prerequisites for said idiots:

1. higher education at a good school: yes, nothing says smart like a good degree
2. charm: how to make nonsense sound a little less ridiculous by looking good
3. no sense of self-worth: only approval form other people is what really matters

they follow a simple schema:

1. keep moving: if you stay in one place long enough, someone will notice that the stapler has more common sense than you
2. keep moving again - move up by moving sideways: face it: since the database backup server contributes more to the company than you, the only way to move up it is to move companies. never stay in one place more than 2 to 3 years
3. learn and like what an ass tastes like (i mean that in the bootlick sense, not the literal sense)

the result is what you see in everyday life: idiots in high positions.

more american idiots

yes, it's that time of again. americans make it easy for me to pick on them, really.

cnn has a weird feature where people send in answers to a provocative question (not sure if it's text or twitter or some other "in" shit). so cnn asked the question "are you willing to sacrifice some of your rights to help the effort against terrorism?" and i caught two of the responses. needless to say, these were americans at their best:

"if necessary, but constitutional rights are inalienable!" way to go learning a big word like inalienable. so dimwit, what rights are you willing to sacrifice? ones scribbled by 3 year-olds? your rights are constitutional by definition.

"of course, because if we don't the terrorists will win." who are those mysterious people known as the terrorists? win what exactly? does the average american really believe that there is a species out there out to get them? news flash: there are no "terrorists", they don't want to "win" anything. the only ones in a war are your representatives in government, waging a fight against a vague image of an imaginary enemy. another news flash: you'll never win because there's nothing to win.

right-click

set as desktop background. that's how you change the wallpaper on your windows desktop. no one has any excuse to retain the piss-ugly green field xp desktop. in fact, there are some tools that will randomly set wallpaper from your pictures folder.

note: do NOT set a picture of your kids on your desktop. no one gives a fuck.

what you'll never see on tv

csi: after the corpse is fished out of the river, the chemicals found in its hair are not unique. in fact, just common salt and pollution found all over town. case closed.

sci fi series: the flagship just patrols the space. a strange artifact in encountered and turns out it's just a rock. alarms aren't sounded.

sci-fi alternative: the flagship runs into a superior alien ship, to be destroyed in a cloud of shrapnel and vapor.

medical drama: as the patient is rushed into the emergency room, the doctors converge on her, yelling medical statistics and diagnosis. 3 minutes later, she passes away.

young rich people show (90210, one tree hill, the oc): the guy falls in love with the girl and marries her without complications.

blog entry title

yes, this entry's title is redundant. other examples:

cnn: some african leader wants to ban illegal demonstrations. doesn't illegal mean banned?
almost all marketing idiots: buy an extra large and get a gift, absolutely free! if the gift weren't free, wouldn't it stop being a gift? (talked about this one before, but it just keeps coming back)
cnn (again): that area is heading for some wet rainy weather. thank god it's not dry rainy weather.

imagine something with me

imagine something with me.

imagine an alien spaceship orbiting earth observing our habits. i ask you this: what would they make of celebrities? i was wondering that looking at a noisy singer with lots of female fans waving posters of him in the audience. most would kill to spend a night with him. what struck me as odd was that he's not handsome, they don't know if he's charming or nice or an asshole. all they know about him is that he sells lots of songs. add to that phenomena like paris hilton, perez hilton and other airheads who are famous for being famous and you'll get what i mean.

imagine something else if you will.

imagine humans twenty thousand years from now stumbling upon a massive, ancient structure that can seat 50,000 humans, all facing a great big rectangular area. analysis of the area reveals that grass was grown there. at each end the remains of poles were found there. what purpose did such a structure serve? was it some sort of temple? could they imagine millions of people intensely watching 22 grown men run after an inflated leather bundle?

hi5 suggestions

i am somehow signed up for a service called hi5. i think it was a pre-facebook sort of thing. anyway i've never used it, but it keeps on sending me useful friend suggestions. see the screen shot below. one may notice the bunch of children on the left.



however, i would like to draw your attention to H. yup, the gentleman wielding the large machine gun, in the foreground of what can only be somalia. how hi5 thought i would be interested in a "freedom fighter" is beyond me. see sometimes technology just breaks.